President's Choice Loads of Smokin Habanero Tortilla Chips

I have this thing for trying strange flavours of chips. Not like, I only eat strange flavoured chips. I completely enjoy many regular flavoured chips (favourite chip flavor: Sour Cream and Bacon. What's yours?), but if I see a strange new kind on the shelf, I am drawn to it. Even if it sounds terrible.

Sometimes this works out well (see PC World of Flavours Sweet Chili Thai Flavour Rippled Potato Chips - that's an excellent chip. Then again, I've never met something Sweet Chili Thai flavoured that I didn't like), other times...less so (see Doritos all nighter Cheeseburger - I'm mostly opposed to these because they taste too much like a cheeseburger - seriously, it reminds me of Dairy Queen - but the texture is wrong and that's weird. It's the same reason I don't like buttered popcorn Jelly Bellys).

On a recent trip to the grocery store, some chips caught The Husband's eye - President's Choice Loads of Smokin' Habanero Tortilla Chips (which oddly I can't find on the President's Choice website, but you can but them here*). They sounded interesting and snackable, so we bought them.

Now, I like spicy food, but not overly spicy. I don't want to be uncomfortable and I want to actually taste the food, not just feel the heat. The Husband likes spicy more then I do, but I would say not in any kind of extreme way. I wasn't home when he tried them, but he told me he stopped after five chips and that they "might be a little much."

This made me a somewhat scared to try them.

In this review, I'm not going to talk about appearance and texture - they're chips. If you've ever eaten any kind of tortilla style chips (like Doritos), you know what they're like.

I was quite surprised when I ate my first chip. It really wasn't that spicy. In fact, I didn't feel any burn. They had a smoky, salty, slightly tangy taste. All around quite pleasant. I couldn't really understand what The Husband was talking about, too much.

...then I ate two more.

These chips have a slow burn. It sneaks up on you. After three chips, I could totally get why you would want to stop at five. It wasn't uncomfortably hot at three, but the heat builds pretty quickly. Which is good for portion control, I supposed. I couldn't imagine sitting down and mindlessly eating a whole 250 g bag of them, that's for sure.

Later on I tried eating one chip and waiting to see if the same slow burn effect happened, and surprisingly it didn't. It must have something to do with, like, residual flavour particles layering in your mouth. Or something. I don't know. I do know that if you don't like spicy foods, you probably would enjoy eating one of these chips, but likely not two.

Overall, Loads of Smokin Habanero Tortilla Chips were tasty, but I probably wouldn't buy them again. They were, indeed, a little too much.

*this is just some random website I found. I have no idea if they are trustworthy. Buy at your own risk.

Lip Relief

This morning, my lips were hurting. I don't know if it's just because it's winter or what, but it was not cool. I have in my possession two different things of lip stuff - Blistex Lip Infustion Cherry Splash & Burt's Bees Beeswax Lip Balm - that were both just making it worse. The Burt's Bees stuff has peppermint oil in it, so that makes sense, but I don't know what the problem with the Blistex stuff was. So anyway, I went on a search of my house for some other kind of lip balm. I must have some somewhere, but damned if I could find it. What I did find was this little can of Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream. I flipped it over and read through the ingredients. It was mostly things like almond oil, wax, lemon peel oil, cocoa seed butter...things that did not seem like they would kill me if I put it on my lips (in fact, it sounds a whole lot healthier then a lot of the processed foods I regularly eat, but that's a whole other kettle of fish). Also, I was a little desperate. So I slathered it on my lips. INSTANT RELIEF. My lips felt better. Not only that, but I braved the icy winds (seriously, according to the weather network it feels like -16°C out there...I believe it!) and crowds (which were surprisingly not too bad) to go get some christmas shopping done. Two hours later on my way home my lips felts a little waxy but they still didn't hurt. I know I'd have had to reapply any lip balm I've ever tried before by then.

Now, I'm not saying that you should run out and buy this for all your hurting lip needs. It's not formulated for (and probably not tested for) that, so I can't tell you if it's actually safe or not. I'm just saying, if you're desperate for relief and willing to take a chance...this will do the trick.


What's your go to product/trick for hurting lips?